You Are Already an Ancestor

This podcast is offered by San Francisco Zen Center on the web at sfzc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. Good morning everyone. Welcome to Beginner's Mind Temple. Lovely to be here with you all. Thank you for finding some time in this busy world to be here. Whether you're here in person, online, or perhaps watching a recording, some unknown time in the future. My name's Dan Gudgel. I'm a resident and a priest here at Beginner's Mind Temple. We'll be together in this room for about the next 40 minutes or so. So please keep yourselves comfortable if you need to adjust your position. Get up and get an additional cushion. Step out to get a drink of water. Whatever takes care of you. And after this I'll be in the dining room for discussion. So if you'd like to explore any of these topics further, please feel free to do that. And there will also be tea and cookies in the Welcome Center, which is a great place and opportunity to ask any general questions you might have about what we're doing, why we do it in the ways that we do. And folks in robes or rock-a-sous are really good folks to ask because they likely can at least direct you in the right direction. And I will also just encourage us all to just let this talk wash over you. Don't be too concerned about following every word. I know I never remember all of a Dharma talk, but sometimes there is a word or an action, a phrase, something that lands and is helpful for me. So just allow that to happen if that is the case. In addition to being a resident here at Beginner's Mind Temple, I also have the great fortune to be the guiding priest of Mountain Source Sangha, which is a neighborhood Zen group that meets regularly in Marin, in San Enselmo, occasionally in Belinas and online. And that is the group where I first stumbled on to this Buddhist path to my amazement 20 years ago, 20 years ago next month. I set my first period of Zazen with Mountain Source Sangha. And now somehow I am the one leading ceremonies and guiding our collective exploration of Buddhism in that group. And in the San Francisco Zen Center world, we call these satellite groups that have sprung out of the lineage of our founder, Shunri Suzuki. We call these branching streams Sanghas. So feel free to visit our website, take a look. There is a good chance there is a branching stream Sangha somewhere near you. And this week in particular, Mountain Source Sangha has been here for a week-long retreat, working and practicing alongside the residential community here. It's been a real joy to have this neighborhood Sangha here in my neighborhood for the week and exploring the temple life. Many of these folks have many years of experience in Zen, in this building, in previous configurations of it, and across the world of Buddhism. And Mountain Source had been gathering for Zazen and service for a dozen years before I wandered into it. So this is the 32nd year of that little neighborhood Sangha meeting every week. And this Sangha has nurtured and encouraged their own shared experience alongside the fundamental teachings of Shunri Suzuki and this lineage of Soto Zen. And as a neighborhood group, we've particularly looked after the experience of Zen practice for folks who have jobs and families and responsibilities out in the world. People in this room right now have done this with their own lives. And by actively choosing to embody and perpetuate this 2,500-year-old tradition, they have created the opportunity for me and for many others to meet the Buddha's teachings. If that group had not been meeting in San Rafael 20 years ago, there's a very good chance I would not be here right now. My life would look very different, and my life would be, I think, much poorer for that. And in fact, all it would take is a single generation of inattention and the lineage that we've inherited from Shakyamuni Buddha could be broken. So this is a sacred thing that we do, along with being a joy and a delightful community. I think nothing matters more than what we actually do with and in our own lives. The slow accretion of one choice, one action after another, that is what we actually pass on to the future. One of our often-cited ancestors in this lineage is Ehai Dogen Zenji, a 13th-century Japanese Buddhist monk who traveled to China to find the practice guidance that he was seeking and then brought what he learned back to Japan to establish a fresh expression of Buddhism there. And in one of his pieces of writing that we sometimes chant here, the Ehai Kosohotsu Ganmon, Dogen wrote, Buddhas and ancestors of old were as we. We in the future shall be Buddhas and ancestors. And in that same piece, he quotes Chanmaster Lungya as saying, Before Buddhas were enlightened, they were the same as we. Enlightened people of today are exactly as those of old. And I find this encouraging and also incredible. In some ways it hardly seems possible. And this text, this particular passage, was very important for me in shifting my understanding of Buddhism, for clarifying the deep belief that it is actually possible for real human beings to do what Shakyamuni Buddha did. It's not easy, but it is possible, even for regular human beings like us. And those people, our ancestors of the past, who made such effort to preserve and pass on this Buddhist practice, were just as messy and difficult and irrational as me. And someone as human as I am can actually wake up to the true reality of the world. If our ancestors say so, I believe it is possible. And I've noticed that this piece by Dogen seems to be getting quoted a fair bit around here lately, in classes and in talks. And I'm thinking maybe it's something that we humans especially need to hear right now. It's certainly something that I feel I have needed to hear and be reminded of again and again. There is hope for us regular human beings. And if I accept that it's possible to actually wake up to the true nature of reality, but then I don't try to do that, then that is one of the choices, one of the actions I take with my life, of letting that opportunity of being a human being pass me by. So today I'm encouraging us all to practice right where we are, to recognize that we're already having an effect on the world. And so we might as well take it seriously. Monasteries and monastic vows are not essential. And it does, I think, also seem like they're helpful for many of us. This mountain source Sangha is a neighborhood group. I call it Parish Church Zand. We've been meeting in rented rooms and church spaces for all of this 32 years. One space after another, a few years at a time, and then the rent goes up or the building is sold, and we find a new space. We gather, we set up the meditation space and the altar. We practice together for an hour or an hour and a half or half a day. And then we pack it all away and we go back to this thing that we sometimes call regular life. Our current Tuesday morning space in San Ensalma has a preschool just across the church courtyard. So we are often meditating while the parents are dropping off their kids and while the neighbors are walking their dogs, while the rest of the world is waking up and getting ready to rush out for another workday. This practice exists right in the middle of the real world. And the real world is wrapped up by this practice. Many of the members of Mountain Source Sangha have in the past and continue to dip back and forth into longer formal practice from time to time. And we all move back and forth across this threshold of formal practice and regular life. And each one pollinates the other. Another helpful encouraging quote that I've been hearing repeated a lot lately is this one from Thich Nhat Hanh. The next Buddha will be the Sangha. And I see this again and again in this parish church style of Zen practice. Each of us, as we're sitting together and discussing and exploring the Dharma, we absorb the lessons and the attitude, hopefully a little bit of the balance and equanimity of this Zen practice. And then that radiates out into our families, into our workplaces, into the highway traffic and the grocery store checkout lines. I notice almost every week how different it is driving up 101 before I spend an hour and a half meditating and discussing the Dharma and then driving back down 101 after that. The first part of that journey is early in the morning when the highway is quiet and empty. And on the way back, it's usually about 9 or 9.30, so still within the southbound rush hour. And even so, I'm usually a lot calmer and gentler and more willing to cooperate on the road, on the way home than I was early in the morning when I had the road practically to myself. So in this modern world, this enormously populated, enormously complex world, sometimes it's hard for me to imagine a single individual having the sort of radical effect that Shakyamuni Buddha had in his own lifetime. But I can very easily see how helpful it is for an entire community of Buddhists to do their best to be kind and gentle and ethical and upright. And there's so much knowledge in this world, so many teachings, so many tips and tricks about how to maximize or optimize our lives. And there's a very small amount that each of us, any one of us individually, can actually personally know and nurture and pass on into the future. So I think we should be really very picky about what we put into our minds and what we then put into the minds of others. Some knowledge becomes dated and unhelpful very quickly, how to set the clock on a VCR, even what a VCR is. This is not essential knowledge any longer. So turning towards the long-running spiritual wisdom traditions of this planet, I think what they have maintained and passed down deserves our care and attention. I happen to favor this Zen Buddhist path, but I think any long-held, deeply felt spiritual wisdom tradition is likely to be helpful and aid to reducing suffering in the world as it is in this moment. And it used to be much harder to pass knowledge and culture on to future generations when everything had to be embodied and memorized. And now I see that I at least can easily become complacent, that the Buddhist teachings have been written down, that I can just have a computer read these things to me. It would be easy for me to put off practice for later, and then later, and then a little bit later. But knowing that there is a spiritual teaching out there is very different than actually living a spiritual path. There's an old Buddhist text that we chant here several times a week, the metasuta, or the loving-kindness meditation. And this text comes to us from the sutta-napata, which is a collection of some of the oldest Buddhist texts. So I think of this as likely being closer to the words of the Buddha himself than some of our subsequent texts. And there are references in the Pali canon to the metasuta, and so it seems to have been well-known from the earliest layer of Buddhism. And this text was also a particular favorite of one of the past mountain-source sangha teachers, Leila Smith-Bakhorst. It was one of her most frequent requests for a chant and was the last chant that was chanted before she passed. And so this chant comes from the era of Buddhism before anything was written down, when memorizing the teachings was a core part of the training of monks. And we hear that, at least from one source, that the Buddha gave this particular text to the monks when they were having trouble with some forest spirits who were keeping them from meditating peacefully. And the Buddha said, take this chant, chant this in the forest, the spirits will be calmed, and they were. So for those who know this chant, I'd like to chant it together now. If you don't know it, please just listen. If you kind of know it, feel free to dip in and out with the bits that you do know, or just listen and take it in. And I'd like us to imagine how this text was originally used and transmitted, freshly ordained monks or young seekers who had not even been ordained yet would have been in the presence of their elders, heard this text chanted, and they would have been asked to memorize it. So just tuck that knowledge away in the back of your mind. And we will chant the loving kindness meditation together. Loving kindness meditation. This is what should be accomplished by the one who is wise, who seeks the good and has obtained peace, let one be strenuous, upright, and sincere, without pride, easily contented and joyous, let one not be submerged by the things of the world, let one not take upon oneself the burden of riches, let one's senses be controlled, let one be wise but not puffed up, and let one not desire possessions even for one's family, let one do nothing that is mean, or that the wise would reprove. May all beings be happy, may they be joyous and live in safety, all living beings, whether weak or strong, in high or middle or low realms of existence, small or great, visible or invisible, near or far, born or to be born, may all beings be happy, let no one deceive another, nor despise any being in any state, let none by anger or hatred wish harm to another, even as a mother at the risk of her life watches over and protects her only child. So with a boundless mind should one cherish all living things, suffusing love over the entire world, above, below, and all around without limit. So let one cultivate an infinite goodwill toward the whole world, standing or walking, sitting or lying down, during all one's waking hours, let one practice the way with gratitude, not holding to fixed views endowed with insight, freed from sense appetites, one who achieves the way will be freed from the duality of birth and death. So those of you who just helped recite that text, do you remember that there was a time when you had never heard it before? Do you remember that there was a time you heard that text for the very first time? A time when you realized you had memorized that text? We all share this one great experience of practice. In his piece called The Dharma When Meeting Senior Instructors, Ehai Dogen, the medieval Japanese monk, also wrote, You should know that temporarily we are guest and host, but for our whole lives, we will be nothing other than Buddhas and ancestors. Those who just heard that text for the first time, or for whom it is still new, you may temporarily be a guest in this situation. In some aspects of our lives, we are always guests in others' hosts, but for our whole lives, we truly will be nothing other than Buddhas and ancestors, together through time. Some of the elders who shepherded this practice through 2,500 years are here in this room. Some of the elders who specifically have helped and supported me are here in this room. I am deeply grateful to my elders. They once were brand new to Buddhism and to Zen practice, and they could have turned away from it at any point, but they did not. And so we are all benefiting right now from that choice and from the opportunity to be in this room with our Buddhist ancestors. This community has benefited this week from the presence of some of these elders who are temporarily guests and hosts. And someday, perhaps someone will say about us, once we were in the room with our elders, I remember it, we learned this from them. What we cultivate in our lives right now, the life that you are already living, is what you are actively passing on into the future. This is not a rehearsal. We are doing it right now. And I see that at times in my life, I have resisted taking up the place of an elder or of a host. In earlier phases of my life, I sometimes outright avoided responsibility as much as possible. And once I stepped into this practice, the first few times that people quoted my Dharma words back at me, it was actually frightening. Just to think, oh my God, people are listening, and what I say may actually affect what they do in the world. I'm just a regular person. And so I really needed to see and accept that I was already, in every moment, inhabiting this role of perhaps a little baby ancestor. Some time ago, a friend was telling me how tired she is of having to work against the same sexist, racist systems that people have been working against for so long in this world. And she said something like, I can't believe we're still talking about all the same bullshit. It's exhausting to be dealing with this. And I really did not have a good response at that time. So I've been continuing to turn that in my mind. And I found, and I now think, in my own experience at least, one of the sources of energy and inspiration to continue trying to reduce suffering and to continue trying to find and spread joy in this world is recognition and gratitude for the efforts of our ancestors. There is still an enormous amount of suffering in the world, far, far too much. And it seems like we've lost ground on easing some of this suffering. And at the same time, if the Buddha, if Bodhidharma, if Harriet Tubman, if Marsha P. Johnson, if Wendell Berry, if our own teachers, if our parents, if our own innumerable ancestors had not made the efforts that they did, we would have even more suffering still on the plate to take care of right now. Yes, things are difficult. And I am deeply grateful to all who came before that things are not worse than they are right now. I do really wish that more of those who came before us had really stepped into their roles as ancestors and tried harder in their own time. And that points me right back at how I better not give up. How I again and again take as my fundamental vow, I vow to keep trying. I don't know how it's going to turn out. And it appears in my current state, I again and again stumble and have to turn back to the path, remind myself of my intentions. But if I can hold this fundamental vow to just keep trying, that's one piece that I have some control over. Nearly 200 years ago, John Ruskin wrote in The Seven Lamps of Architecture, When we build, let us think that we build forever. Let it not be for present delight, nor for present use alone. Let it be such work as our descendants will thank us for. And let us think as we lay stone on stone that a time is to come when those stones will be held sacred because our hands have touched them. And they will say as they look upon the labor and wrought substance of them, See this our ancestors did for us. This attitude seems so far from the disposable, fast-paced, iterative, constantly revised culture that we're living in here and now, that sometimes I'm amazed that this comes from the same world. What work will our descendants thank us for? What are we doing now in our own lives to perpetuate good? We are building something right now far more durable than any single structure. We are building the future of this planet. So let it be such work as our descendants will thank us for. How do we practice with all of this? What concretely can we do? First, I suggest remember your teachers and your ancestors. Remember those who have improved your life, who have made difficult decisions and insisted on what they felt was right, not just what was convenient. Think explicitly and specifically about what you've learned. Think about what helped you and what you wish would have been there to help you. And then offer exactly that to those around you. Acknowledge, connect with and be a friend and neighbor to your neighbors. Your legacy in this world begins at your fingertips and on the tip of your tongue. Don't wait for next time. Be an agent of the reduction of suffering right here and right now, as soon as the opportunity arises. There are no second chances. Each moment of suffering that is unaddressed ripples out into the world. Each act of reducing suffering also ripples out into the world. Concretely, this week, Mountain Source Sangha has gathered here in this temple, bringing parish church zen into the temple and recharging f